


He Who Has Nothing

by sinnamon_nerd



Series: Under the Same Galarian Sky [2]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions
Genre: Aftermath of Explosion, Angst, Character Study, Living on the streets, Orphan Bede, Streetrat Bede, backstory exploration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:27:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25800598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinnamon_nerd/pseuds/sinnamon_nerd
Summary: A look into Bede's past leading up to the events in Hulbury.
Series: Under the Same Galarian Sky [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1862944
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	He Who Has Nothing

Bede woke to a thundering explosion and the shockwaves that rocked his house. He crawled out of his bed, scared as could b, with the intent to head to his parents’ room to snuggle up to them and have them comfort him. Opening his door, he was stopped in his tracks. Fire and smoked suffocated him, the hallway was in shambles, and the left part of the house almost completely caved in. Bede stood frozen in places, the scene in front of him not registering in his mind. Not until he released a breath he didn’t know he was holding. He choked and coughed as he breathed in. Where were his mother and father? They should have-

His knees started to shake as realization began to sink in. Their room was further ahead, close to the stairwell. Ahead and to the left.

He stumbled forward, forward to where his parents’ room should be. Pushing past the flames and debris, he scraped his knees and skinned his palms. Soon, he came upon where his parents should have been, but there was nothing there. Their room had collapsed.

“Mum, Dad!” he called as he cried, but there was no response. Hesitantly, he looked down, down at the destruction of what was once his home, and saw the mangled bodies of his parents – their body parts twisted the wrong way, but their faces still in a deep, peaceful slumber.

Bede’s sobs caught in his throat, horror forming on his face.

“Mum! Dad!” he called again, voice cracking in desperation. “Mum! Dad!”

They would not answer because they simply could not. His parents were dead.

The explosion in Hammerlocke Castle was a great tragedy in Galar’s long history, the news said. The destruction wiping out nearly half of the town with hundreds of people losing their lives. All the fire brigade could do was put out the fires of the aftermath and recover the corpses of the victims. According to the news, there were no survivors among those among those who were caught in it. They were wrong, however. Little Bede, having only turned seven some days ago, was curled up in alley far away from the epicentre. He had ran, ran from the scene with tears streaming down his face as he called for someone, _anyone_ , to help. No one heeded his plea, all of them, _everyone_ , too busy saving themselves to even spare him a glance, so he ran further away.

He hadn’t eaten anything in days and when he slept it had only been because he had passed out from crying.

Bede had nothing left.

A year after the tragedy, Hammerlocke was recovering. There were plans to rebuild the castle, and the power plant beneath it, bigger and better. However, Bede did not. No, in the months since the incident, he’d lost so much weight there was barely any life left in him. His clothes, unchanged from when his whole life was taken from him, were coated in much and grime, his skin and hair covered and matted with dirt and mud. He struggled to survive, all alone and scared, living off of other people’s trash and leftovers.

He refused to give up, though. He’d promised to live for his mother and father.

Another year later, Bede found himself back in the heart of Hammerlocke. He couldn’t take living in the alleys of the residential area anymore. Everyday, he would watch happy families walk by, chattering away and rubbing their lives in his face, so he left in the dead of the night, when no one could see him. He braved the bitter cold of winter, dressed only in clothes that barely fit him anymore and a torn-up blanket too thin to provide warmth that someone had tossed away some months prior.

The new Hammerlocke Castle stood tall and marvellous in front of him with its black bricks, golden details, and towers jotting out of its sides making it appear as though it was a dragon’s head. He decided he hated it, spitting in its direction before walking off in search of a place to scurry off to, a place that would make the cold even just the tiniest bit more bearable.

Eventually, he settled for the back of a newly opened battle café. It was a strategic location, he told himself. There were boxes he could fashion into a makeshift house to shield himself from the winter air and a trash heap from which he could get his food. Bede certainly did not cry as he hugged himself underneath the biggest box he could find.

How long had he been living like rodent? It felt longer than two years, so he thought perhaps it would be coming up to three years. Three years of loneliness, three years of fighting. He didn’t even know how old he was anymore.

Ten months. He’d managed to go ten months in the center of Hammerlocke without being discovered. Ten months of hiding in alleys. Not that he was counting. Arceus knew he’d lost track of time long ago. Not that it mattered anyway. He’d been found. The owner of the battle café staring down at him with a horrified expression on his face.

The Motostoke orphanage was barely a step up from the streets of Hammerlocke. Children, majority of whom were younger than him, fought daily for attention, for survival. Food was scarce in-between them. Often, Bede would sneak into the kitchens late at night just for an extra piece of bread. He didn’t get along with anyone – the younger kids avoided him and the older ones picked on him. Bede didn’t care. He’d been alone before he was brought to the place anyway.

At least he had a bed and clean clothes.

Bede would have been fine keeping his mouth shut, but there were times the older kids would go too far. It was those times that he would turn around and tackle the offending person to the ground only to be overpowered by their numbers. He never went down without a fight, though. Bede would bite their arms and throw sand in their eyes to get them off him before straddling one of them, punching and clawing at whoever he got to until the fight was broken up.

For four months, he dealt with them. A bunch of desperate kids were nothing compared to what he’d been though before.

And then, one day, a man who called himself Rose showed up at the orphanage with a snooty lady trailing behind him. The man said he was the chairman – of what, Bede wasn’t entirely sure – and he was offering him a future.

A future Bede accepted.

Bede’s eyes sparkled as he was escorted up the Duraludon Tower, marvelling at the scenery as the lift continued to rise. He was being given a home to call his own in Wyndon of all places. His eyes turned to the league staff next to him. The man, Eric, was four times his size, himself being skin and bones – his height making him appear even thinner. Eric, on the other hand, was well-built, his uniform shirt hugging his form well. Bede briefly wondered if he’d end up like that one day as well.

Soon, they arrived at his suite. It was large, uncomfortably so for someone who’d come from nothing. The living room alone was bigger than what his entire house had been.

His heart reeled at the memory, stomach lurching. The memory that hit him was so vivid it made him nauseous. There he was, sitting on the living room carpet as he played video games on the television, the scent of his mother’s cooking permeated the room, his father reading the newspaper on the sofa. The little Bede in his memory turned around to show-off the enemy he’d just beaten, however the image that greeted him was not one of his happy little home.

No, little Bede was back in the ruins of his home, looking at the disfigured bodies of his parents.

Bede fell to his knees with a scream, throwing up at the sudden shift in his memory.

Next to him, Eric panicked, his calls inaudible to Bede whose hearing grew muffled, his vision darkening as he lost consciousness.

He woke in a bed much softer than any surface he’d ever been accustomed to. Upon sitting up, Bede saw the chairman speaking with a woman clad in white, his secretary standing behind him. Ms. Oleana was the first to notice him, whispering in the chairman’s ear.

The chairman turned his attention to him, smiling as the woman he’d come to know as a doctor fussed all over him. According to her, it was a miracle that he was even alive, considering how malnourished he was. They had him hooked up to an IV, giving the nutrients he was lacking, but Bede wasn’t listening to her. His attention was on the chairman who, without a word, bid him goodbye left.

In the month of his recovery, life soon returned to him, his cheeks grew rounder and there was some actual meat on his bones. His skin, having been so pale, glowed a healthy pink and his violet eyes shone.

The chairman had given him many things since then, but Bede’s favourite was the golden watch that didn’t even fit his wrist. It was the first gift he’d ever received from the man, finding it placed in an unassumingly black box on top of the dining table one morning. He was also assigned private tutors for varying subject matters, starting off with reading, writing, and counting. Alongside those, Bede was taught etiquette, arguably the only thing he struggled with.

He disliked the tea they made him drink but drank only because they told him it was the preferred drink of high society, the table manners they taught were absolutely ridiculous with all the spoons and forks and knives they made him remember, and learning to be courteous after living on the streets for so long was a pain.

After gifting him a Hattena on his fifteenth birthday – the ball having been placed on top of the dining table in a black box much like his watch had been – the chairman enrolled him in an advanced trainer’s school.

His peers were nothing special, he noted. All of them too caught up in their privilege to actually be of any threat to him. Bede kept his head down, however, not wanting to cause unnecessary trouble for the man who had given him the opportunity to go to school. At least, he did so until the finals three years later where students of the graduating class were to be pitted against one another and graded according to their performance in battle. Bede wiped the floor with the lot of them, raising his head more and more as the tournament went on until he was looking down on them.

There was no way he would lose, he’d thought, he’d come way too far for that to happen.

The chairman had given him a letter of endorsement. It arrived in his mail one morning a month after his graduation. He kept it on him at all times, despite registration not being until a few more months down the line. It was a sign of the belief the chairman had in him.

Bede had decided to leave Wyndon to go on a hunt for more Pokémon to add to his team a week later, packing his bags and some camping gear for the journey. He soon arrived at the wild area, getting dropped off by a Flying Taxi in the midst of it.

Looking around from where he was, the Stony Wilderness according to his phone (another gift from the chairman), Bede could make out the huge structure of Hammerlocke in the distance and the smog coming from Motostoke nearby. Those were two places he refused to set foot in. He had no business in either location and would continue to avoid them for as long as he could. Meanwhile, camping in the wild area brought him back to a time when he had nothing, barely alive in the cold streets of a town he’d grown to hate.

He lay awake at night, fearing the nightmares that would come if he dared to close his eyes.

Bede didn’t know why, but he seemed to have an affinity for Psychic-Types. His team, now with two more members, comprised of Hatenna – the chairman’s gift – Solosis – his first ever capture, the Pokémon having followed him after he’d saved it from a pack of Linoone – and Gothita –he’d caught her one particularly foggy night, it having attacked his team first.

He stared down at his little misfits as they ate. If anything, he believed in them.

Ms. Oleana was waiting for him in his suite, siting by his dining table when he’d arrived from his trip. Bede set down his bags, moving to sit across her, his brows knit together in confusion. She’d asked him if he wanted to be of use to the chairman, to return the favor of all the things he’d done for him. Bede’s answer came as easily to him as breathing.

“Yes.”

And so, she began telling his exactly what it was that the chairman was plotting.

It was easy to put two and two together after Ms. Oleana explained to him exactly what has been going on in the Galar region. Bede felt sick to his stomach when he realized that the explosion in Hammerlocke all those years ago was caused by one the chairman’s experiments. The chairman was why he’d lost everything in the first place, why he suffered for so long. He ought to resent the man, cuss him out for everything he’d had to go through, but he couldn’t. The very same man who caused his loss had saved him, provided for him. There was no way he could bite the hand that helped him out of the shadows.

And then, much to his horror, he realized that the chairman, whom he’d held in such high regard, didn’t even know his name.

They had been in Hulbury at the time, the Gym Challenge having started some days ago. He’d thought it would be a good opportunity to let the man know of his devotion to him, but that very same man didn’t even know his name.

One look at Ms. Oleana, who was avoiding his gaze, told him everything.

All of the gifts, the education he’d received, they were all her doing.

Bede broke out into a cold sweat as he attempted to maintain composure, reminding the man of his name as calmly as he could. He needed to get away. Away from the man who ruined his life, away from the man who didn’t even care about him.

His feet took him to Galar Mine No. 2 where he proceeded to throw up into the nearest body of water.

After everything he’d went through, he still had nothing. However, he wasn’t about to let go. If the chairman didn’t recognized him, Bede would make him.

Gathering those stupid Wishing Stars was all he had to do.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on twitter @sinnamon_nerd  
> Or, if you'd like to support me on a more personal note, you can go to ko-fi.com/sinnamon_nerd


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